M4.0 Earthquake near Esashi, Japan — 20 July 2026

Light earthquakes are widely felt near the epicentre and can rattle windows, dishes and hanging objects. Damage is uncommon and usually limited to cracked plaster or fallen loose items.

A magnitude 4.0 earthquake radiates roughly 15 tons of TNT equivalent in seismic energy.

The USGS assigns this earthquake a significance score of 246, which is below the USGS threshold of more than 600 for its significant-earthquake list. The ranking combines magnitude with available Did You Feel It responses and PAGER alert level; it is not a direct measurement of damage.

That is about 08:53 local solar time at the epicentre, during the morning.

This event was deeper than 92% of the 1,222 earthquakes recorded in Japan in our catalogue and stronger than 0% of them.

The epicentre was located at 45.5752, 143.7830 — 117 km northeast of Esashi. The closest other recorded event was a magnitude 4.1 earthquake 31 km north-northwest of here on 26 February 2025.

The nearest other settlements in our records are Korsakov (31 km north-northwest), Hamatonbetsu (62 km west), Nakatonbetsu (128 km west-southwest) and Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk (168 km north-northeast).

At 303 km this was a deep-focus earthquake, occurring well inside the subducting slab rather than in the crust. Deep events are rarely damaging even at large magnitudes, though they can be felt over very long distances.

This catalogue does not ingest eyewitness responses, so it cannot confirm where this earthquake was felt. Based on magnitude alone, an event this size is often felt across the surrounding area. Its deep focus normally weakens surface shaking while spreading perceptible motion over a broad area.

The USGS record does not carry a link to NOAA tsunami information. That field is not an all-clear and does not state whether a tsunami occurred. In this case, a damaging tsunami would be less likely because at M4.0 it falls below the magnitude 6.5 threshold that generally applies before a submarine earthquake displaces enough water to generate a damaging tsunami; its 303 km focal depth is too great to deform the sea floor significantly; it occurred inland rather than beneath the sea floor. For an active coastal alert, use tsunami.gov or your local warning authority.

No further earthquakes have been recorded within about 150 km of the epicentre in the seven days after this event.

11 earthquakes of magnitude 4 or above have been logged within roughly 200 km of this epicentre in our catalogue. The strongest was a magnitude 4.9 event near Nakatonbetsu on 12 January 2026. This M4.0 event released about 22 times less energy than that event.

1 earthquakes have been recorded within 100 km of this epicentre in the past year, 0 of them in the past 30 days.

This earthquake is part of the July 2026 worldwide record, and of earthquakes in Japan during July 2026. Browse the full monthly archive to compare periods.